Trivia / Elemental (2023)

• Completely Different Title:
  • Greece: On Their Element
  • Japan: My Element
• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • In the European French dub, actors Adèle Exarchopoulos (of Blue Is the Warmest Color fame) and Vincent Lacoste voice Ember and Wade respectively.
  • In the Italian dub, Ember is voiced by actress Valentina Romani, Wade is voiced by presenter Stefano De Martino and actors Serra Yılmaz and Hal Yamanouchi voice Cinder and Bernie respectively.
  • In the Japanese dub, actress Haruna Kawaguchi voices Ember, while singer and actor Yuta Tamamori (of Kis-My-Ft2 fame) voices Wade, fellow actress MEGUMI voices Gale and comedian Mikio Date voices Fern.
  • In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, actresses Marisa Orth, Giovanna Antonelli and Cacau Protásio voice Cinder, Brook, and Flarrietta respectively. Actor André Mattos voices Bernie.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Mexican actress Erika Buenfil voices Gale.
• Descended Creator: Pixar regular Ronnie Del Carmen provided the voice of Bernie.
• Distanced from Current Events: Some of the promotional posters were parodies of previous Pixar films, and were posted online. However, Ember's poster◊ (which parodied Turning Red) was quickly taken down due to the Canadian wildfires that were happening during the time.
• He Also Did: Joe Pera, the voice of minor character Fern Grouchwood, not only has his own show on Adult Swim, but he also voiced a character in the adult-animated Netflix show F is for Family.
• In Memoriam: This film has not one, not two, but seven of these, all of which appear in the closing credits. The first of these is "In Appreciation of Miss Renee (1971-2023)". The rest of the dedications appear after the copyright notice and disclaimers. Set to an animation of a blue flame, there are dedications to Pixar art director Ralph Eggleston, editor Thomas Gonzales, former animator Amber Martorelli and story artist J. Garett Sheldrew. At the end, a picture of Peter Sohn's parents, who sadly passed away before they got the chance to see the movie, is shown as Sohn's way to thank them for everything.
• Kids' Meal Toy: McDonald's released a set of eight racing toys in their Happy Meals; Clod, Bernie, Lutz, Gale, and two different toys each of Ember and Wade.
• Late Export for You: The film got delayed in the United Kingdom and Ireland to July 7, 2023.
• Meaningful Release Date: A major element of the film's story is Ember's relationship with her father, so it makes sense that the movie was released during Father's Day weekend.
• Missing Trailer Scene: Ember and Wade's Meet Cute scene shown in the teasers doesn't happen in the film.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Kai Ava Hauser, a nonbinary voice actor, plays Wade's nonbinary sibling, Lake.
• Sleeper Hit: The film was labeled a flop after it made only $29.6 million over its domestic opening weekend, the second-lowest opening for a Pixar film behind only 1995's Toy Story, and by far the lowest opening when taking ticket price inflation into account. The film didn't have terribly high expectations of a turnaround after the failure of Pixar's previous film Lightyear and the belief that Disney's audiences had become accustomed to watching Pixar films on Disney+ after Soul, Luca and Turning Red were released straight to it. However, strong word-of-mouth, positive reviews, Disney's determination to keep the film in theaters for as long as possible, and a lack of competition among new family films for most of the summer gave the film unusually strong legs, and it climbed to $154 million domestic. The film was an even bigger hit internationally, hitting $496 million worldwide and breaking even on its $200 million budget, buoyed in part by surprisingly strong box office in Asian markets such as South Korea where it became Pixar's highest grossing film ever. It also surpassed Tenet as the highest grossing original film released after the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Vindicated by Cable: Following the buzz created by its turnaround in theaters, particularly internationally, it became the most viewed premiere on Disney+ in 2023 domestically, cementing itself as an underdog success story.
• Viral Marketing: Attempted with a fan cam featuring Clod, but it was deleted after concerns about it promoting predatory sexual behavior involving a child (even if the child was the one flirting with the adult) were brought up.
• What Could Have Been:
  • A deleted scene depicts Wade and Ember meeting an unused fire character named Dante who was gonna share a room with Ember. Ember and Wade fixed up an apartment room outside of Fire Town so that Dante can stay. This all goes wrong however.
  • During the end credits, the film was initially going to depict Ember and Wade returning home with the reveal that they had a baby made out of steam. It was ultimately scrapped as the writers wanted the audience to settle with the characters first before such an idea would take hold.
  • In an earlier version of the film, Brook was to be the head of the water works in Element City and serve as the antagonist, with her goal being to run a water way through Fire Town. This concept was dropped because the writers felt that it detracted from the love story.
• Word of Gay: Wade's sibling Lake is non-binary, and declared as Pixar's first non-binary character, but the only implicit indication of it in the film is the fact he refers to Lake as "sib", once, and is contradicted in another instance when he refers to Lake as "her", though there are some non-binary individuals who use gendered pronouns, so it could be possible for Lake to be non-binary while still using she/her pronouns.
• Write What You Know: Director Peter Sohn explained that the film's themes of culture clash and focus on Star-Crossed Lovers were directly based on his experiences growing up in the Bronx as the son of Korean immigrants.

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